


coney island

by newtheglue



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Based on a Taylor Swift Song, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Fluff, Grief/Mourning, Holding Hands, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, literally thats the most explicit it gets go cry abt it, mcd is old man Steve rip in peace, no stucky endgame sorry, winterfalcon endgame because i do what i want
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:09:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28025265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newtheglue/pseuds/newtheglue
Summary: It’s November of 2014 and Steve is sitting alone on a bench in Coney Island.—It’s November of 2024, and Bucky is sitting alone on a bench in Coney Island.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Sam Wilson, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers
Comments: 6
Kudos: 46





	coney island

**Author's Note:**

> okay so i listened to coney island by Taylor swift ONCE and was like,, stucky,, so now I’ve listened to it like 500 times and I’m sad

It’s November of 2014 and Steve is sitting alone on a bench in Coney Island.  
  
His coat does little to keep the chill from seeping into his bones. He settles for stuffing his hands in his pockets, leaning back to watch the crowd pass him by. 

Kids scurry around their parents, yelping and chattering in excited voices. Their parents, looking relaxed and content, look on fondly. There’s a crowd of girls by the railing near him, cheeks flushed from the wind and the boys talking to them. The boys play it cool, but Steve isn’t blind to the tips of their ears reddening when one of the girls smiles. Couples stroll hand-in-hand, pressed together for more than just the warmth. 

And Steve Rogers thinks his heart may never mend. 

Bucky Barnes is alive. 

Bucky is alive, and Bucky doesn’t know him. Bucky is alive, and Bucky is alone. 

It’s wrong, Steve thinks, that he exists in a world where Bucky Barnes lives and breathes and Steve isn’t with him. A world where Steve doesn’t even know where to start. 

And it’s been this way for months. Since D.C., Steve hasn’t known a night of rest, a night where his dreams aren’t haunted by a ghost with blue eyes and a scream that could pierce skin. 

Or maybe it’s been this way for longer. Maybe Steve hasn’t known rest since 2012, or maybe since 1945. Maybe he hasn’t known peace since fate thought a world where Bucky and Steve were parted was one it wanted to see. 

Somewhere near him, a broadcast plays over a smartphone’s tinny speaker. It’s his voice, the one from his Thanksgiving speech. He’d donned his civies, but the facade of Captain America was very much in place. He can hear his voice, speaking about what to be thankful for, about what he’s thankful for. 

_“This holiday season, I’ll be sure to share what I’m thankful for. Freedom. My fellow teammates. My country, it’s people.”_ A laugh, short and fake to his ears. _“And yes, the Polio vaccine!”_

The script was shallow, fit for Captain America, but a mockery of Steve Rogers. 

Steve hadn’t said anything he was thankful for. 

For Sam. For Nat. _Teammates_ didn’t feel like an appropriate word for people who spent off-days playing Uno at Sam’s house. It wasn’t fitting for the only people he’d cried in front of since 1945. 

For Peggy. The last person alive who had a chance of remembering him before the serum. Someone who knew…

For Bucky. For every version of Bucky that had or did exist. The Bucky who couldn’t sing but sang to Steve when he was sick just to make him laugh, the Bucky who had an arm of metal and a head full of Hydra’s orders. 

He hadn’t said Bucky’s name in the video. He could’ve. Could’ve said he was thankful for the memories of his late best friend. 

Steve doesn’t know if he’d chosen to not say it, or if he’d forgotten. 

He knows that he’d forgotten how to live in a world where he could say his friend’s name. He knows that he’d forgotten how to live in a world _with_ Bucky, the same way he’d forgotten how to live _without_ him. 

He’d forgotten both and still didn’t understand how it was possible- where that left him. 

Steve is still faced with the harsh possibility that Bucky may be dead, that he’d been killed by Hydra, or that his mind had died in 1945. He didn’t know if Bucky was alive, or just a body to be used by Hydra. 

And Steve doesn’t know where that leaves him. Bucky was the only one who knew him that deeply, loved him that strongly. Bucky is the tether to his past, and Steve doesn’t know if that tether is frayed or cut. He doesn’t know who will understand him if Bucky is gone. He doesn’t know if he wants anyone to understand him like that again. 

The man with the smartphone playing his voice laughs, nudging the man next to him. The other man rolls his eyes, says something about _fake-ass superheroes._

The sun has almost dipped below the horizon by now. 

Steve tips his head back to glance at the sky. The stars are hard to see in the city, but a few peek out nonetheless. 

It’s strange to know that so much exists beyond this planet. It’s something Bucky had always insisted on, something Steve hadn’t even considered until Schmidt. 

Steve wonders if maybe there’s a universe out there where Bucky was okay. He can picture it. 

There’s a universe where Steve falls instead. Bucky grieves and so does the world. But the war is won. Bucky goes home. He’s old and gray and has kids and a wife and a dog. Bucky loses his best friend, but he keeps his life. 

There’s one where they both make it out. Steve and Bucky win and they both go home. Steve doesn’t know where they go from there, he doesn’t think it matters. They both have a chance. 

There’s one where Bucky crashes with Steve. They both wake in the future, out of time, but not out of place because the other is there. Bucky has his memories, and Steve has Bucky. Bucky fights aliens and geeks out over the technology of Howard’s son. In that universe, Bucky sits with him on a bench in Coney Island. They’re holding hands and the cold doesn’t ache. 

Bucky’s face is at the forefront of Steve’s mind. Smiling, crying, 1945, 2014, _BuckyBuckyBucky._

Disappointment swells in his chest, threatening to overtake him. There’s an ache in him, his soul breaking at the thought of his oldest love. 

And Steve knows. 

Whatever happiness existed in those universes, ones that allowed Steve and Bucky to hold hands on a bench in Coney Island, would never be a possibility in this one. 

The shards of his heart lie in pieces on the walkway.

It’s November of 2014, and Steve Rogers knows that his heart will never mend. 

He closes his eyes against the wind and cries.   
  


* * *

It’s November of 2024, and Bucky is sitting alone on a bench in Coney Island. 

The plates of his arm twitch under the heavy leather of his jacket. He runs his right hand along the smooth wood of the bench, tracing patterns in the grooves. His eyes scan the crowd, analyzing and vacant all in one. 

There’s a livelihood here, one that reflects the all-encompassing joy of the world since the _‘blipped’_ returned. Children and teens cluster in groups, once-classmates now divided by a five-year gap. They laugh and run like nothing has changed. Parents look on, happy but with the underlying apprehension that it could disappear. There’s a group of couples leaning on the railing near him, girls with flushed cheeks and boys with red-tipped ears. They hold tightly to one another like their linked hands will keep their partner from disintegrating before them.

And Bucky Barnes thinks he was made to be alone. 

Steve Rogers is dead. 

Steve is dead, and Steve left him.

It doesn’t feel right. Bucky has never known a world without Steve. Bucky, naively, had assumed that death wouldn’t part them again, that nothing would, not after Thanos. 

But nothing has felt right in a long time, and Bucky doesn’t know why he thought this time would be any different. 

Steve and Bucky hadn’t been _Steve and Bucky_ for years. There was a divide, one deeper than those separated in the Blip. 

Bucky had gone as sharp as the blade he’d used to kill innocents and murderers alike. Steve had gone as cold as the ice that had suffocated him for seventy years. 

Bucky hadn’t known Steve the way he once did, and Steve had grieved the bond too deeply to even attempt a new one. They had been somewhere delicate before Thanos, Bucky breaking the last branch the moment he’d collapsed into dust. 

They’d been one another’s last link to the past. Without the bond that had shattered in 1945, they were both set adrift without a soul to relate to. And now…

The news is nowhere and everywhere all at once. Headlines about the disappearance of Captain America, but nothing even hinting at the occurrence that happened two weeks prior. Newscasters saying Captain America has been presumed dead, but none of them speaking of the funeral that Bucky had attended. 

He’d gone in his sleep, they said. Peaceful. Uneventful. Mundane.

Bucky didn’t know death could seem out of character. 

Steve was fierce. Loud. Screaming and fighting when no one else would dare. Nothing about him had been peaceful, and Bucky hadn’t been looking for peace. 

Bucky shivers. Grief and cold wrap around him like a cocoon. He welcomes them both like an old friend. He’s known them both longer than anyone on earth. 

A couple rushes past, giggling with a large teddy bear in hand. Bucky’s lips curve upward, thinking of Steve’s story about some red-headed girl from the 30s. Dot? He can’t recall her face. 

Bucky never remembered those girls too well anyway. 

Steve though… he could never forget Steve. Seventy years of programming and Steve had never been fully washed from him. Steve lingers like a tattoo on every memory Bucky has, tainting and enhancing all the same. 

Bucky is lost again, but Steve remains. Bucky, with his heart in shreds, silently begs him to stay. The memories are all he has, and memory is fickle. 

Without Steve, Bucky is out of time, out of place. 

The sky is dark, the moon glowing across the water. The stars, crystal clear after the pollution reduction, twinkle at him. Tears fall from his eyes, and Bucky wonders if there was a universe where he wasn’t alone. 

Maybe there’s a universe where Bucky went with Steve. One where Bucky lives in the house beside Peggy and Steve. They both have families. They never leave one another. 

Or one where Thanos never comes to Earth. Steve and Bucky continue their charade of acting like they’re okay. Steve comes to Wakanda and Bucky smiles, and maybe in this one, it’s real. Maybe when Steve hugs him, it doesn’t feel like a stranger’s arms around him. 

Maybe there’s one where Steve stays. Where they fix it, whatever was wrong with them. Maybe Bucky softens and Steve grows warm. It doesn’t matter where they go because they’re with each other, and in this universe, it’s enough. In this universe, Steve takes Bucky’s hand, and they dance. 

Steve is ingrained in his very being. There’s no inch of Bucky that hadn’t loved him, hadn’t grieved him.

But now, Bucky thinks, he needs to let go. 

Steve had made his choice. He’d lived, and he’d loved. Why shouldn’t Bucky have the chance? Didn’t he deserve a choice?

“Hey,” Sam’s voice chimes beside him. He holds a cup out for Bucky to take. The cup warms Bucky’s hand when he takes it. “Hot chocolate,” he clarifies. “You looked like you were takin’ the Winter Soldier thing a little too seriously.”

Bucky smiles around the lip of the cup. “Thanks, jackass.”

“Did I interrupt a moment?” Sam asks, sitting beside him. Heat radiates from Sam like the sun, and Bucky thinks the comparison isn’t too far off. Sam’s been his light for the past year and a half, his guide to something better. 

“No… no, I just… I was thinking about Steve.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.” Bucky takes a breath. “I miss him, but I…” 

He struggles to find the words. Sam is silent, and when Bucky looks at him, he sees nothing but patience in his eyes. 

“I thought that I was alone. Without him, I mean.” Sam’s eyebrows furrow a bit, so Bucky continues, “He was the only one who knew me before, and I thought that meant that he was all I had. But that… I don’t think I was right. The person I was before, I don’t think I can be him again. And with Steve, I was trying to be that guy. I tried so hard, but I’m not him, and I won’t ever be him.” He pauses. “I don’t think Steve expected me to be him, but I don’t think Steve was prepared to let go either. He loved me no matter what, I know that. But I’m not the Bucky he wanted.”

“That’s-”

“It is true,” Bucky says, not letting Sam finish. Sam glares. “Because I loved him no matter what, but he wasn’t the Steve I wanted either. The new versions of ourselves didn’t fit. We’re- we _were_ too different.”

Sam frowns, considering. “You were everything to him.”

“I know.” Bucky smiles a bit, bittersweet. “He was everything to me too. But that version of him, the version he had to be, fit better with Peggy. And I’m so _happy_ that he had that, Sam. I really am. Because he knew that when he made that choice, he was making a choice for me too. He set me free when he did that. I can be… anyone. No one expects Bucky from Brooklyn. I can be whatever I want to be with whoever I want to be with.”

“Poetic,” Sam says, smiling. “You really think that idiot had a full plan?”

Bucky grins. “Probably half a plan. Just good intentions.”

“Road to hell,” Sam says, and Bucky laughs. Sam grins back then adds, softly, “For what it’s worth, I think he made a really good choice.”

Bucky’s smile turns embarrassingly soft. “Yeah? I think so too.”

It’s nice, whatever this is. The cold air brushing his cheeks, warmth filling his chest from Sam and the drink. Sam’s eyes sparkle a bit, and it’s different, Sam is different, but Sam is gentle and beautiful and Bucky feels at ease. 

Sam isn’t all-consuming like Steve. There’s no wildfire, no grief and history coating every inch of what they are. It’s slow and warm, this thing, making Bucky feel calm. It feels like peace, like hope, like stepping off a ledge and knowing you’ll land softly. 

In another universe, Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes make it. They love each other and it works. They live happy and uneventful lives together. They die uneventful deaths together, with intertwined hands and intertwined hearts. 

In this universe, Steve Rogers returns to Peggy Carter. Peggy gets her dance, and Steve gets his peace. They have a family, and it’s beautiful. It’s everything Steve needed. In this universe, Steve Rogers dies eight years after Peggy Carter, and it doesn’t make the news. 

In this universe, Bucky Barnes is drinking hot chocolate with Sam Wilson. It’s a beginning for both of them, one where Sam is vulnerable and Bucky is gentle. They’ll heal together, and it will be beautiful. It’ll be everything Bucky wants. In this universe, Bucky smiles at Sam and thinks maybe he’s worthy of something. 

Sam’s hand takes Bucky’s. Their fingers intertwine, metal and flesh warm with the hope of something new. Bucky’s cheeks are flushed and Sam’s eyes are filled with constellations. Bucky’s head leans on Sam’s shoulder, and Sam’s thumb traces the gold of Bucky’s hand. 

And Bucky knows. 

Wherever happiness had existed in those universes, ones that allowed Steve and Bucky to dance with one another, would never be a possibility in this one. 

But this universe, one that promises Sam’s hand in his, is where Bucky hopes to remain. 

It’s November of 2024, and Bucky Barnes isn’t alone. 

Bucky closes his eyes against the cold and lets go. 

**Author's Note:**

> the fact that Sam wasn’t featured more is a crime and I’m sorry  
> also I proofread this once and wrote it in a frenzy after an 8 hour shift so if there are mistakes that’s my b


End file.
